Bewailing of the Summer Sunrise
by Aiko Isari
Summary: [01/02] AT, ageswap, spinoff of Dance of the Lunar Blood arc 1 and part of Solar Eclipse. On August 2nd, 1999, two lives were cut, and the two worlds were sealed from each other. Now, in April of 2002, that seal has disappeared, and the chaos has started again, if it ever truly ended.
1. 0-1

_**A/N:** _I know, what am I doing with myself? I honestly don't know, I'm mostly writing this to keep me in the mood for Lunar, because a lot of my currently needing update stuff isn't like this. The first arc is written. I'll start writing the next part in a few days. Please let me know what you think, and considering how this spin-off starts, please don't murder me.I'm sorry this came out really late but I kept getting distracted so... yeah. Here we go!

Warnings: Death, blood, violence, swearing, um... mind-screw? I suppose? Let me know if this should be M guys. The line is really blurry.

Arc Zero: Life

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All Taichi remembers clearly is red.

Tears of red falling in a single stream down from a cloudy sky.

All he remembers clearly is red on the ground, the comatose singing a name in steady staccato cries. He dimly recalls the sounds muting to a single broken howl and a rush of flames from the earth. He has to shut his eyes, cover his ears even though he _doesn't want to, he needs to see_ as the inferno howls from the depths of its creator.

The demon beast roars in a vibrating, somehow _human _cry of despair.

Then the air is silent but for the sound of a painful splat on the concrete.

For what feels like hours, Taichi slowly gathers his courage and eventually opens his eyes.

VenomVamdemon is gone. The clouds are gone. He looks around slowly, as if in hope, as if there is something else to see.

Ofanimon is nowhere to be seen either, her scythe imbedded in a piece of concrete and fading away.

Something is dangling on a piece of rubble, twisted awkwardly and caught in the shadows.

He looks up at the sky, realizing how _dark _it is. There are no streetlamps, no bright things but the lights from their chests. Not even the stars are shining.

Anxiously, a thought occurs to him. "Onee-chan?"

Where was she? They had won! Where was she?

He looks and looks and his eyes are drawn to the dangling thing near where the scythe had been. Taichi takes tiny steps forward.

Then Sora pulls him away, and simply holds him.

He wants to struggle, by impulse, by his very nature in facing what is so frightening about the world, but her grip is tight and like Mom when the Emergency Room door opened on that horrible day.

She pulls him away from the object he can't make out, and desite it all, he finds himself beginning to sniffle.

"No." He tries. He tries denying it because denying had _worked _before and it should work now because miracles happened and were incredible and-

That was not his sister.

His sister was warm and with brown hair and strong, soft hands that wiped his face and bandaged his cuts and smiled when she shouldn't. His sister was alive.

She wasn't dead, she wasn't dead-

He feels Sora's tears slick down his forehead and cries because he can now almost feel how the others are crying and there's no one saying it's going to be okay.

So Hikari has to be dead.


	2. 0-2

**_A/N:_ **Well, considering the reaction I got from someone off-screen, this is either really good... or really bad. I'm not sure which it is at the moment, but I'll hold my breath that half of the problem was that I updated this really, really late. But I dunno. I'll , the bombshell, but... why does that surprise anyone? It's me.

Anyway, this will be updated as I write new chapters. Please enjoy and let me know what you think!

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In the sky, around the world, another reality continues moving overhead. It's as though time only stopped in one part of the world, and the rest continued turning. To be precise, that is _exactly _what happened.

All over, news anchors and poor cameras and people are drawn from their screens to look towards their night sky.

The stripes of an upside down world, caught in a perpetual cloudy midday, waver and sway like a person entranced by music. Creatures dive down from its depths in slow descents.

No one sees the significance until a building crumbles like a pile of dirt.

Then the screaming begins.

The military forces of the world rise up over days, and their bullets might as well be made of candy for all the progress they make.

Eventually, the monsters vanish of their own accord and the air stops echoing with screams, if but for a moment.

The sun rises on one side of the world, and with it comes the strangest light, gentle scarlet darkening to blood red. In Japan, on the side of the earth where it's nighttime, the sky is lit in this color with a backdrop of stars.

Once again, in the month of August, 1999, something changes.


	3. 0-3

_**A/N:** _Hey guys! Rypht, thanks for your review, you brought up some good points. That chapter was actually supposed to be combined with this one... but I didn't feel it connected as well, so it was separated. Anyway, here we are! Please let me know what you guys think!

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The Chosen Children are huddled in various small apartments. Some are watching out of the window, unable to sleep. Others are against the wall and sleeping, tear tracks dried on their faces.

Sora holds Taichi, who has fallen asleep again with snot on his face and bloodshot eyes. She watches outside with neither apathy nor fear. If an enemy comes again, the Digimon outside will destroy it, as ruthlessly as they have been for days.

The splintery guilt and sickness that filled her heart at the sight of it once is long gone now. She doesn't want to die, any more than the others do.

Even Jyou, whose carefully ingrained duty to preserve life, and Mimi, who is so slow and careful at making her decisions resolute, accepts it now.

Yamato is the most brittle, because he didn't see. He didn't see her body fall like that, hear her sing something over the howling of the air. He missed all of those things, and from that he has a more fragile hold than she thinks he knows. They were never quite as close, Hikari and Yamato, not in the way Yamato thought closeness should be. And that fact will never change now.

She glances towards Koushiro, who sits between his parents (_adoptive_ parents, she remembers him saying, one night when the outside of the shelter was lit up with fire and they were so close to the end) with his laptop closed. He is dozing, dozing while thinking and she envies him for being this composed on the outside. It's probably the one thing keeping her from snapping at this moment.

Takeru is not sleeping. Takeru is watching the outside, with Patamon on his head. He doesn't look tired. He doesn't look upset or angry. He looks only curious, wondering. His large, blue eyes are reflected in the window, but he doesn't seem to notice or care. Something has caught his attention.

Sora wishes she could understand Takeru right now, but she cannot, and she is frightened to try now.

Just as there was something different about Hikari, now there is something undeniably different about Takeru.

He saw her fall.

He had not screamed.

He had not made a sound.

But now he was moving towards her, shaking her knee carefully. "Sora-san," he says with a hoarse urgency. "Something is out there!"

His voice is quiet from lack of use and an awareness of the sleeping people in the room.

"Your parents with more survivors?" She doesn't hope, not as much as she could. They had found most of them in their houses. Her mother was not one of them. But she could be out there somewhere. She could be...

He shakes his head no. "Something different." He doesn't clarify and one thing about Takeru that she has managed to understand is that he often _can't _clarify what it is that he is trying to put to words, not without vulnerability that he is still unconsciously wary of.

So she gets up slowly, setting Taichi onto a blanket by her feet, and follows him. Koushiro peeks his eyes open, and she shakes her head imperceptibly. He nods and rises with care to not wake his family, following with shuffling steps.

Outside, the sky is as red as the sunset and sparks of light are falling like snow.

Takeru could never have described this.


	4. 0-4

_**A/N:** _Thanks, Rypht! Enjoy and let me know what you think everyone!

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"It's bright..."

Sora realizes she mustn't have been paying as much attention as she could have been. It's almost like daylight out here.

Takeru nods but shakes his head, pointing at the sky further. Koushiro squints to see a pale band of light running over the sky. "What is that?"

The color covers the sky, even the sections of the Digital World, tinting it all like it's being seen through a puddle of red. The white band is harder to see from that, and Koushiro takes a few moments to think of guesses and vague mutterings before answering:

"I don't know." He sits with his laptop and thinks wearily, letting it load. "I'll see if I can send a photo to Gennai-san somehow... he may have a clue."

"One that he won't share with us," Yamato mutters with rancor as he exits their safe zone and Koushiro smiles privately.

"He's all we have at the moment."

Takeru agrees with this, standing both much like his brother and too much like an old little boy. The sparks of light dance over him and he feels his face stretch out into a smile. He doesn't know why, lifting his head as Patamon wriggles to stay on and eventually starts to hover beside him.

Another impulse strikes him and he pulls out his Digivice to the falling lights. They touch and red becomes pink, then white, then gold. Then Takeru vanishes with Patamon, the light gone with them.

"Takeru!" Yamato moves forward and his Digivice is struck as well, the light becomes pink, then white, then darkens to blue. He is frozen, struck, then gone.

The Chosen hurry out, the brightness and shouting impossible to ignore. One by one, the light gathers them up, and leaves adults squinting and alone in the red sky world.

When the children open their eyes, it's nighttime, pitch black from light pollution and broken streetlights. They are standing in midair, and each of their Crests is pulsing gently. They all look at each other, puzzled until a voice speaks from just behind them.

"The temporary transition is successful."


	5. 0-5

_**A/N:** _Here's an update! I hope it works for everybody!

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"The temporary transition is successful."

The voice is mild, airy even, and when they turn its owner smiles with a bitter edge to their lips.

"Onee-chan?" Taichi's voice is weak and tired and his fingers are clenched so tightly over the Digivice Sora wonders if indents are embedded into the bone.

The Hikari in front of them is the one they know, bloodless and pale, dark-haired and with softly red eyes, but she shakes her head. "This is only a form," she says, in a voice that is both flat and warm, like their feelings are puny compared to everything else, whatever 'everything' may be. "A form you will understand, a form you... _may _accept."

"Then who _are _you?" Mimi's voice is worn and sad and frightened. "Haven't we done enough?" Her voice leans towards shrill, settling on exhausted.

The others look at each other, silently agreeing but not wanting to say it.

The Hikari-lookalike shrugs. "It depends on your definition of 'enough'," she says. "Is the world safe? Are you free to return home without a monster devouring you or your family?"

"You got Onee-chan killed!" Taichi's voice is almost a scream, and the sound of it causes Takeru to grab his arm and pull him back. He doesn't resist, but there is no way he would have.

The girl pauses, sighs, and nods. "Yes, we did. We are her angels. We had to make a sacrifice."

There is no guilt in those words, no misery or regret or even mourning. Just a rather practical sort of acceptance. Like this wasn't the first sacrifice. Like this wouldn't be the last.

Jyou catches this and seems to cringe. "It isn't over."

"It's never over," the angel says with finality. "But that is not why I'm here."

"Then tell us." Yamato grits out the words, his hand tightly clenching to Takeru's shoulder.

The angel smiles again, this more amusement than bitterness.

This is not the end. This is only the beginning.

But in this respite, the respite granted by a sacrifice, it is up to them to decide who it will begin for.

They are not the first Children. They will not be the last.


	6. 0-6

_**A/N:** _ Update! Updating everything is fun. Or some things. Please enjoy and let me know what you think!

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They touch down on Earth again maybe hours later. They are all drained and tired and leaning on adults for support when they do.

Taichi is swept into his newly-found parents' arms and they bawl because someone has told them the truth.

Mimi hugs her family and does not cry, though her eyes are wet and she wants to, she focuses on holding Palmon and keeping Sora's hand as near hers as possible so the girl doesn't wander off alone. Her friend's eyes are somewhat unfocused, and she looks around, hoping to see someone that's still not there.

Jyou stays by his brother, tending mechanically to small wounds and disregarding the blood (for he has seen too much already and can't muster up the strength to be sick) and only smiles when Shin pats him on the shoulder.

Koushiro is thinking, muttering small snatches of sentences, but letting his mother and father talk it out with him. Their experience will understand what his logic cannot quite grasp yet, and the answers will come.

Takeru falls asleep against his brother, like everything is going to be all right.

He's the Child of Hope. Yamato hold him tighter and hopes his brother does know if it will be.

The sky remains red, but gentler now, like the urgency it came for has passed.

In another room of the apartment, covered by a blanket, Hikari's body flickers like a television set.

It will be only when the run-down building is quiet that they will notice it is gone, leaving her cracked Crest to flicker gray in its Tag.


End file.
